Pop Punk Died 15 Years Ago Today, And ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ Killed It

Fifteen years ago Monday, the world had a song bestowed upon it that would change the course of music by lowering the level of discourse in the world of pop punk to its nadir. If you are of a certain age, you will remember the heyday of pop punk, a brief period of time when it took over music around the turn of the millennium. After the surprise success of Blink-182’s 1999 Enema of the State, pop punk, the logical endpoint stemming from The Ramones adding some melody to punk, became the music of the moment. It still has its champions, but those are increasingly hard to find in the mainstream. And that’s the fault of “Teenage Dirtbag.”

You may remember this song well. Wheatus was a one-hit wonder, and, of all the pop punk songs that became hits, “Teenage Dirtbag” is the worst, and we are well aware of the discography of Avril Lavigne. “Teenage Dirtbag” is worse than “Sk8er Boi” or any other song you want to throw out. Also, Lavigne basically just made pure pop music anyway.

Let us set aside the fact that the lead singer of Wheatus had a whiny voice. Let us set aside the instrumentation, as well, which isn’t terrible, to be honest. The problem with “Teenage Dirtbag,” and the reason it synthesizes everything that was wrong with so much of pop punk so definitively, is the lyrics.

The story is as simple and insipid as it gets. Our protagonist is the titular teenage dirtbag. To what extent he is a dirtbag, we will never know. We do know he listens to Iron Maiden. That’s about it. Iron Maiden, of course, being a heavy metal band whose music has nothing to do with Wheatus’. Anyway, this guy loves some girl from afar, he doesn’t think she knows who he is, and her boyfriend is a jerk.

It’s really not worse than Avril Lavigne. She started the whole black/pink pre-torn clothes thing that surely put the last bullet in the head of punk even though mall punks had been around for years. And for the neutral teenage dirtbag is better than sk8er boy even though that songs lyrics are understandably dumb considering her age at the time.

I’m just surprised that you’re concerned about a song not following tropes. Maybe he’s just writing a song about something that happened to him as a kid. That’s a weird criticism. I get it for TV and Movies. Songs are a different thing altogether.

I too don’t get how this is pop-punk. For me, pop-punk implies a relatively fast BPM and “Teenage Dirtbag” seems more pop-rock for reasons including it’s slower tempo and its lack of shouted lyrics and loud, fast distorted guitars. To each his own, though.

I worked at a Musicland that counted Wheatus’ first album among its in-store repetoire and they had a decent cover of Erasure’s “A Little Respect,” for what that’s worth to any of you.

As a metalhead, that doesn’t sound anything like Blink, and comparing the two is rude. You should be ashamed of yourself.

We metalheads know a thing or two about garbage pop being lumped in with our music (sometimes by our formerly favorite artists [glares at Lars]), and all I can say is you have to just listen to what you like and ignore the garbage.

Most importantly, avoid the radio at all costs. Even Sirius/XM plays the same stuff so much that you can set your watch by it.

Legitimate question, since I never got into metal too much (but kind of wanted to). Are there any good metal bands that incorporate something a bit more melodic into their songs? Or is metal anti-melodic by nature?

A few friends of mine used to listen to bands like Helmet, and I couldn’t get into it. Just sounded like screaming to me. If so, that’s okay, it would just mean that metal ain’t for me.

Metal just has to have a heavy tone and this doesn’t necessarily require the use of melody but a lot of bands use it. There’s many examples in pretty much every sub-genre of metal. Melody is more inherent in metal than people realize. Even on the heavier side of the metal spectrum there’s melody being put to use, often in very complex song structure.
Check out Neurosis, High On Fire, Gojira, Mastodon, Down, the Melvins, and Every Time I Die. These bands and others like them, I feel, use melody in a much more interesting way than a lot of the poppier bands the scene kids are into these days.

If you want to hear some metal that is atypical of what’s been popular, check out Animals as Leaders and Meshuggah. They take traditional music theory and turn it on its head without being too offbeat or sounding like a warm up session. Then you can check out some good chick metal like Huntress, A Sound of Thunder, In This Moment, Butcher Babies, or Otep and find some really good melodies with awesome vocals.

This article’s entire premise is wrong. Its not even a pop punk song and it was awesome. Plus I’m sure there’s a Wheatus/Harvey Danger reunion tour going on in some tiny hodunk bar somewhere right now.

I can pinpoint when Pop Punk died: when My Chemical Romance decided to jump genres and make a rock opera. That failed miserably, and its stench rotted every other pop punk and screamo band from the inside out.

Good news is that pop punk is on the upswing again. Somehow the last Fall Out Boy album was critically acclaimed. Plus, I recently found out that the latest Paramore album is actually freaking amazing and shows the band is way better off without the Bible thumping brothers who left in 2010. Also The Wonder Years are by far one of the best bands out there right now, and they make pop punk songs that are surprisingly affecting for everyone in their late 20s.

Honestly, the rise of Victory and the corresponding drop off of Drive Thru Records signaled the end of that era of pop-pump. There are some bands doing some cool stuff in the genre now (Mixtape, State Champs, Chumped), though it is slightly different.

Wheatus was this generic power pop that was everywhere around that time. There are a handful of power pop bands that are great like Pavement and Superchunk, but so much of it is just radio friendly lite grunge.

As someone who has actually heard their entire first album ( my sisters friends brother was the bassist) I can safely say they were not pop punk. Also their song punk ass bitch had it’s lyrics changed and was used as the closing credits song for the cartoon The Jackie Chan adventures, they also went gold in Australia.

Interestingly the reasons why the song was written are completely omitted from this article. Anyone who has ever asked BBB about the songs point or has done any research into finding out would know that it isn’t a blank song about nameless people. I think anyone writing an article so harsh and openly aggressive should have done their research into where the song came from.

I’d consider Teenage Dirtbag to be more a Pop-Rock song rather than Pop-Punk. There are a lot of bands that are labelled as Pop-Punk by the media like All Time Low, Mayday Parade who are nothing more than boy bands that write their own songs and play their own instruments and I’m not saying there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just that they might as well be supporting One Direction rather than playing Warped Tour. Then you’ve got bands like Story So Far, Neck Deep etc that claim to be Pop-Punk when there is nothing Punk about their music. I do believe Pop-Punk has died or at least isn’t nowhere near as popular as it used to be in the 90’s because most of the listeners have grown up. You can say Teenage Dirtbag is a bad song but there are a hell of a lot of people out there that would disagree with you.

Now of course everyone is allowed an opinion, but Fucking hell why talk shit about one band, I fucking love wheatus and I have seen them live for five years straight. You call blink 182 and bands as such as being pop punk, pop music I know nothing of but punk I do, punk is everyones own interpretation and not one genre on its own ( and knowing most punk lovers they would hate to be branded to one), so no wheatus didnt kill pop punk it was people branding music and telling everyone what things were.
And wheatus are one of the best bands ive seen, everything they play and make is real, no autotuned shit, and Mr Brendan B Brown the (“whiny”) lead singer is one of the nicest guys ive ever met so humble and always makes time for fans.
I will certainly still go to see them and will definitely be buying Brendan a beer

As Auli said above, you not only haven’t done your research into what the song is really about, but your argument that “these bands are crafting disingenuous music in order to sell records” is the most banal thing I’ve ever read. Bands create music to sell records (not that anyone in this digital age is buying records) regardless of whatever the lyrics are. By suggesting that these bands are disingenuous you put it upon that there are people out there who are genuine. In that point, is Eminem preaching that we should shoot a person’s head off, or is Beyonce real because she sings about those gosh darn bills.

Forgetting that, this is a FUCKING SONG! Who cares what story it tells or lyrics it uses, if it’s catchy and toe-tapping, enjoy it. If it appeals, listen, buy. It’s not aimed at teenagers, its aimed at anyone who enjoys music. My Chemical Romance sung that “teenagers scare the living shit out of me”, yet teenagers will buy the song even though they’re being berated. The point being that if the tune is good, it is worth listening to.

To suggest that a music genre is dead because it’s not played on the music television anymore just shows how ignorant you are. The music industry has changed, the internet has taken hold of it and choked it out. Now music is enjoyed live and guess what? The pop-punk scene is alive and well. (At what point is Wheatus considered pop-punk anyway? Pop Rock maybe).

I implore you to open up your eyes, ears and mind and go out and listen to some awesome bands that you could consider “pop-punk” Army of Freshmen, Math The Band, Hand Job Academy and Late Cambrian. Next time, think before you post. Idiot.

Please! Teenage pop culture is almost always shaped by adults. Most bands you download or listen to on the radio are not actual teenagers. The people who write movies and tv shows aimed at teens are adults. Also, it seems silly to mourn the watering-down of pop punk, when the genre itself is a watered down version of punk. And why did this start with Wheatus? Sublime was waaayyyyy more immature and dopey than these guys. Call them ska if you want, but they were part of the punk pop ska thing before Wheatus turned punk into Emo

You are a fucking moron. I see this has already been covered/established.

Your article is one of the most recent and stellar examples of someone pushing their own unresolved issues onto persons they know little to nothing about I’ve seen.

Instead of talking smack about a group of talented, skilled, and tenacious artists you should seek professional assistance to resolve whatever internal emotions conflicts you are dragging along with you. I hope you are not under the delusion that this sort of thing is acceptable as a professional journalist of some sort. In fact if you received compensation I myself would personally feel shame for accepting it and passing it off as either professional nor even responsible writing. This is at best Urinalism, and it should have been flushed in private instead of being publicly displayed.

I say this with confidence as a paid and published independent author. I’d be willing to bet money your education far exceeds mine, but your entire intent much less content of this essay is at best questionable. In truth, shameful is by far more accurate a depiction.

And that girl at prom? I dated her, and she completely blew my mind. And her boyfriend was a dick who in fact drove an IROC. I am guessing he did not bring a gun to school, he was not a redneck with a pickup. Only the 4H Club set did that where I went to highschool. But seeing as these guys grew up more East Coast inner city than foothills of the Ozarks I could overlook the imagery as being all too possible in the world they grew up in.

I’ll be 45 very soon and although I wasn’t hangin’ with the “dirtbag” crowd, I still very much remember the prejudices and social pressures of high school. And almost all the music I bothered to write was written then, as is true of a arguable majority of rock musicians of any genre. Even the STONES are still performing the same questionable music they wrote as teens to this very day. Ed Sullivan demanded they change the lyrics to “Let’s Spend some Time Together” or they were off the show, because that was way too far past being socially acceptable or responsible. Rock music is literally built upon people saying things that aren’t acceptable to say. Professional writers however, should always be professionals…